


Crash

by paradiamond



Category: The Rook (TV 2019)
Genre: 1.02 AU, Gestalt catches her out after picking her up from the bar, Hurt/Comfort, Myf POV, Other, emotional overflow, smacks mystalt, you can fit so much drama into this bad boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 16:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20820425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradiamond/pseuds/paradiamond
Summary: Myfanwy doesn’t even last one full day before she breaks. Luckily, Gestalt is there to put her pieces back together- after they crash a car.





	Crash

**Author's Note:**

> I crave that early episode Drama, give me the all the angst and I'll put it back together again

Time might heal all wounds, but Myfanwy had only had about a day to go on and so far it wasn’t working. 

“I don’t know why she coddles you,” Gestalt was saying, gripping the steering wheel so tight their knuckles were white. “Wraps you in her skirt, like it’s Bristol all over again.”

Myfanwy blinked, feeling slow. Dull. She shouldn’t have been drinking. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Robert didn’t look at her. “You know what it means.”

But she didn’t. Wouldn’t. Probably ever. She’d be stuck like this for the rest of her life, picking at the edges and finding scraps. 

Probably get fired, which was just as well, since she no longer really knew how to do her job and now her coworker who she’d clearly had an affair with was picking her up from a bar at nearly midnight. Great show there. And all for the one person other than Linda who had shown her any sort of consideration, and Linda was about as trustworthy as old Myfanwy seemed to think of anyone. The constant surveillance. The strangeness. 

Ingrid was nice, though, so that wasn’t fair. But was she a friend? Myfanwy couldn’t tell. She felt like a friend. What she needed to do was get herself together to figure it out, and hopefully not ruin the relationship before she did, like she clearly had with Gestalt. 

Something in her chest twisted, like panic, but not. Maybe the memory of pain. Maybe she’d get her memory back and they’d all laugh about this. Maybe she’d die in her sleep from the residual trauma of whatever happened to her brain. Maybe she’d just fade away. 

Gestalt would pull up to her place, tell her to get some sleep, that they would start again in the morning. Be professional. She should do that. Be professional and be safe. Be smart. 

“Myfanwy?” 

She blinked. Were they there already? It was hard to see through the rain, and she couldn’t remember what the outside of her building looked like. She opened her mouth, and nothing came out. 

“Myfanwy?” Robert tried again, reaching out to touch her shoulder. She turned to face them, and they jerked back, real concern coming into their eyes. “What- what’s wrong?”

“What?” 

Robert looked back at the road, one hand still on the wheel, before turning back to her. They were still moving. Or moving again. “You’re crying.” 

Oh. 

“Oh.” Myfanwy scrubbed a hand over her face, feeling shell-shocked. “I’m sorry.” 

“What?” Incredulous now. Robert shook their head. “Myf- what the hell is going on?” 

“Nothing!” She winced. That didn’t sound real, not even to her own ears. “Don’t worry about it, we’ll sort it out tomorrow.” 

Robert hesitated, she saw it in their face, the desire to reach out warring with the deeply ingrained urge to be polite, be professional. When they pulled over to the side of the road, Myfanwy went for the door handle, crying in earnest now and unable to stop. “I’ll uh- see you tomorrow-”

“No!” Robert reached over and took her hand away from the door. “Stop this. Something’s different with you, I can tell. You’re not alright and I thought it was just about what happened between us, but it’s something else. This isn’t normal.” 

Myfanwy laughed, curling over her body in her seat, real panic starting to creep up in her, and Robert looked horrified. Whatever this threat was, if Gestalt was involved or if they really wanted to help, she was just tired. Just wanted it over. “I-” 

They were just looking at her, into her eyes. She felt it then, that sixth sense that everyone had and most people ignored, that she could trust them. Instinct. Also probably the booze. Her judgement was shot. Not that she had much to base it on in the first place. Better to take a leap of faith. 

“Ok.” Her voice was awful, like a drowned thing coming back to life, and she could feel how much of a mess her face was. The outside converging with the interior. “I lost my memory.” 

Robert shook their head. “What?” 

She waved a hand. “I don’t remember anything from the past, well, anything before yesterday. Or the night before, I suppose. I just woke up a blank.” 

Gestalt stared at her, completely flat. Shocked to nothingness. Then something hit the car from behind, sending them crashing forward, and it all went peacefully black.

***

The apartment looked different when she got home, now flanked by all four of Gestalt. It was to the point that she stopped to look at it, confused by the change. Maybe it was the way they filled it up with life. Gestalt was the only person in the world she had any real context for, so having them here now made the apartment seem real, instead of the place she’d been haunting for the past day.

“Come on,” Gestalt said, she missed which one, and guided her further in with a hand on her elbow. 

Myfanwy moved carefully, though really she was barely hurt. They had been struck from behind by another car that just happened to be operated by Eliza Gestalt, something that amused the police and medics that arrived on the scene greatly and Myfanwy and Gestalt not at all. Alex and Teddy showed up to the scene to help, brittle as the rest of Gestalt’s bodies. Wooden. Processing. Myfanwy could relate. She wouldn’t have blamed them if they just left her there in the rain, frankly. 

No one had been badly hurt, luckily, but there was a lot of explaining to do, both in terms of Gestalt clearing up the incident with the authorities and the Cheque people showing up and Myfanwy off to the side, telling Alex in more detail what she’d meant in the car. No memory. Bodies at the bridge. Linda helping her hide. They took it in with no reaction at all. 

Then they brought her home like they’d meant to in the first place. 

It was late, which was just as well since she had briefly lost consciousness and wasn’t supposed to go to sleep anyway. Concussion risk, but small. Teddy had solemnly promised the medic to keep her up or wake her every two hours anyway. But at least she was sober now. Nothing like a nasty shock. Old Myfanwy seemed to think that pain did that, but she was in a ringing kind of pain now from the crash and it was nothing to the release she had experienced as Gestalt rubbed her shoulder in the cramped third car, murmuring nothing as they drove. 

“Well,” Eliza dropped a bag on the counter. “Let’s see it then.”

Myfanwy blinked, then remembered. “Oh, it’s all in the panic room.” She moved to show them, but they waved her off, Eliza and Teddy heading back into her bedroom. Did they have the code? Apparently so.

Myfanwy frowned, leaning heavily against the wall with her arms crossed. What had she been thinking, the old her? Had panic overtaken her judgment entirely? Gestalt didn’t seem like a threat and it didn’t seem like she thought they were before. Far from it. She’d clearly trusted them right up to the moment she hadn’t. Something must have spooked her. 

Gestalt had asked for all the stuff that proto-Myfanwy left her. All the videos and notes and clues and there was no good reason not to give it to them, not anymore. The big secret was out. Myfanwy watched from the entry way until Robert guided her to the couch, sitting her down like a doll. A puppet with cut strings. She laughed, and they gave her a long look.

“Alright?” The concern in their voice was hard to hear. She’d really put them through it over the past few days, and they still cared. 

“Yes.”

Robert nodded, then blinked. “Wow.”

She frowned. “What?”

Eliza walked back into the main room, holding on of the files. “This.”

“Oh, right.” Myfanwy looked away, but everywhere she looked, their eyes followed her. She must seem so crazy to them. “They’re pretty involved.”

“It’s…interesting,” Eliza said, the way one might say that a bug or hideous piece of art was ‘interesting’ when there was nothing else good to say about it. “Kind of, ah, intense, but that does make sense. Considering.”

Myfanwy cracked a smile. “Considering she was crazy?”

All of Gestalt looked up at her, and she leaned back into the couch. “I. That I was crazy.”

“I’d say paranoid.” Eliza snapped the file closed and dropped it in the stack next to Teddy, who’d followed them out of the panic room with an armful, and was now sitting at the counter, going through every piece one by one with no expression at all. 

“Apparently with good reason,” Robert said, very quietly. They had sat down, not next to her on the couch, but on the floor in front of it, their back resting against her legs so that their neck was right in the dip between her knees. Couldn’t bear to sit next to her, but couldn’t bear to go far, either. 

Myfanwy reached down, then hesitated, then stroked her fingers through their hair anyway, trying her best to soothe them. If they didn’t want it, they’d stop her. Everything was in their power now. 

They seemed to have split the emotions between them, and not necessarily into what she thought was their usual division. Anger was Alex, still standing by the door and doing absolutely nothing but glaring at the floor. 

Sadness was Robert, sitting by her feet, the pain coming off of them in waves she tried and failed to catch and hold. They leaned into her touch, though.

Numbness was Teddy, just processing all the data. An automaton. All action.

And mania was Eliza, cleaning up the mess in her bedroom and searching out food and fixing Myfanwy up and getting her into new clothes.

This might have given Myfanwy pause a few hours ago, letting them strip off her work clothes she didn’t do any work in- her little shoes, her frumpy skirt and blouse, and replacing them with soft, clean things, moving her limbs for her, directing where she should move. Of all the things to be concerned about right now, brief partial nudity in front of the one person in the world she had a sense that she trusted and had apparently had sex with before was low on her list. When she sat back down, Robert took up their position again. 

“You said I was incredible.”

Myfanwy looked up from where she’d been pulling at a string coming off the sweater Eliza had produced and hooked over her head. Had she? “When?”

Robert turned their head enough for her to see them frown, and she remembered. When she saw the way they handled the accident, all the pieces moving together, interlocking. And all the while, no one else had any idea. “Right.” She waved a hand, a bit embarrassed. “Well, you are.”

“No, I mean.” They looked away. None of them were looking directly at her, actually. Not anymore. “You said it today. You’ve only known me for two days, from your perspective.”

“Yes?”

They shook their head. “No one does that. Not like they mean it.”

“Well,” she said, still feeling shell-shocked with exhaustion and emotional overflow. “I did.”

“You just met me.”

Myfanwy tilted her head. “Maybe.”

“You either did or you-”

“I did, but it hasn’t felt like that. Not lately.”

Robert turned all the way around to look at her, the focus in their face intense. “Not lately as in the past few hours.”

“As in since you took my hand I felt you. And ‘not lately’ for me is in terms of minutes, unfortunately. But I- I want to trust you. I wanted to, back at the bridge. It was just all so much.”

Robert blew out a harsh breath. “I know. I knew, I could feel it. Why didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Trust me?”

“I was scared. Am scared. I’ve uh-” She paused to scrub her hands over her face. Felt like the blood was still there. The stiffness and filth. “I’ve been second guessing everything since I woke up.”

“I can see why,” Robert said, and Myfanwy looked over at Teddy, still going through the notes and videos in silence at the table. They shook their head. “What a mess.”

“Yeah, I- something happened, didn’t it? Worse than the bodies at the bridge and the men at the bank, I can tell. Linda won’t tell me anything. All she wants is to send me away. I still don’t know what it was, only that it was awful.” 

Gestalt, as a whole, was very still. Secrets, always more secrets. Myfanwy sighed and laid back against the couch. Felt like she could sink back into it forever. Melt away. 

Then Eliza kind of swept into the room, eyes wide and a little wild. “Do you mind if I throw these birds away?” She pointed at the little glass statues on the sideboard. 

It was such a bizarre statement that she almost didn’t understand what had been said. “I- no?”

“Great.” Eliza swept them into wastebasket, the glass breaking against each other as they went. Myfanwy watched with open curiosity. This part of Gestalt seemed to be processing the whole situation by exerting as much control over their immediate environment as possible. Which was fine. They were just birds.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what else I could have done differently.”

A long stare from Eliza, still holding the basket. Flat.

Myfanwy sat up straight. “Once I woke up, I mean. Before...I could have told you. It’s clear to me now that I can trust you. I should have. But I don’t remember why I didn’t.”

At that, they got uncomfortable. “I do,” Robert said. “Farrier told us you were played by a psychic.” Their hand twitched up to the couch. “We talked about it right here. We didn’t believe you.”

She shook her head. “It’s not your fault.”

All of a sudden Alex straightened up, pain splitting over their face, and took off, out of the flat. The door slammed behind them. Myfanwy jumped. Then the quiet descended.

*

There were a lot of things that Myfanwy didn’t know. Her own history was the main one. How this happened to her was the other big blank. But there was a lot that she still had. The Prime Minister. How to drive. Little things, deeply embedded. Songs. Skills. It wasn’t all gone. 

“What-” It had been quiet for so long that her own voice startled her. Myfanwy touched her own throat, skin brushing skin. “Oh.”

Teddy looked up and frowned, but Eliza spoke. “What?”

“I was going to ask what happened. To me.”

A sigh rolled through Robert that she heard in Eliza and Teddy at the same time. Resigned, but not resistant. 

They told her everything, and it was awful, like something from a book. Glengrove. Bristol. Farrier. Plainly, like they were delivering a report. Gestalt delivering a report was one of the few things she had seen with her own eyes over the course of her short life, so she knew. The content was more of a horror tale. The images of it overlaid with the clues in her mind. The little box. The petrified glass. Birds. This was what drove her to the fear.

“I killed our own people, “ Myfanwy said, feeling as though she was testing out the concept. It didn’t seem real. And was it worse than the people she already knew she’d killed? That she’d seen? Maybe. 

“Yes.”

“Not intentionally,” Eliza said.

“You were pushed,” Teddy finished.

“I did it again, though,” Myfanwy said, missing her detachment fiercely. She wanted the quiet back. “At the bridge, at the bank.” She was dangerous like a storm. A natural disaster.

Silence. Then Robert, quietly. “What happened when you woke up?”

Myfanwy looked over at Teddy, at the piles of her life, and they waved her away. 

“No, I want to hear it from you.” 

“Oh.” 

That was a better, more straightforward story. All origin stories were. Roots, trunk, branches, leaves, seeds. She bent over at the waist, drained, her head in her hands, and Eliza finally came over to sit onto the couch with her, their hand on her back. 

She told them everything. Lulled them into it the way she putting herself back together, how she reasoned and lied her way back into her own life, piece by piece. It got easier to talk with every word, with Eliza’s hand on her, heat to heat. She sat up, slowly, like she was filling back up with water, her cells strengthening again. By the time she was done with the straight line version and had moved onto the little details, she was fully sitting up. 

“That was more or less when you found me at the bar.” She swept her hair away from her face. “When I was sitting there...I thought maybe I was supposed to die and this happened instead. I mean, I basically did die.” 

“Don’t say that.” Eliza was pale now. White on white. Seemed like the mania had tipped over into something worse. All three of them were looking at her, Teddy twisted in the chair, Robert turned around on the floor to face her. Alex was still gone, their absence an echoing presence in the flat. It would only be a matter of time before another left, then another. And she’d be alone. 

She wanted to be comforting. Couldn’t. It didn’t help that she was getting that feeling again. The one where the part of her that was herself was a balloon that was slowly floating away from her body, leaving the shell behind. “But…maybe it would have been better for you? Simpler. If I died there, or if I left, even, you never would have had to know about any of what I did before, that I’d lost my-”

Robert shot up to their knees, almost falling in the rush to grab at her arms, catching her tight against their chest.

“Better?” Their voice was a low hiss, coming from all three mouths. Only Robert continued on, the lines on their face set deep. Fire in their eyes. “Do you know what would make this situation worse? The only thing that could possibly ruin it even more? If you weren’t here.”

Myfanwy blinked. “I-”

They gave her a little shake. “Promise me. Promise me that you won’t hurt yourself. No running away where the vultures can get you, no cutting, none of it. This is done.”

They were holding her so tight it hurt, and it felt like they also held her lungs, squeezing the air out of her. “Ok.” 

Robert’s other hand came up in a flash to hook around the back of her neck, holding her still. “Ok what?”

“Ok, I won’t lose myself,” Myfanwy said, very quietly. She couldn’t see anything but their eyes. “I won’t hurt myself.” 

Robert nodded but didn’t pull back. “Won’t kill yourself. Won’t run away. Will you?”

“No!”

Robert rolled up higher on their knees and kissed her full on the mouth. Shocked, Myfanwy inhaled sharply, opening her mouth, and Robert followed, sliding their tongue across her bottom lip before delving in, their touch edged with fear and longing. And at every point of contact, she felt them. Their entire self. Four bodies, one mind, all humming with life and brimming with pain, but also aching, pulling feeling. She sighed, relaxing into the feel of it. The feel of feeling. What Gestalt was living, lit up with emotion. 

“Sorry.” Eliza now, their voice a bit strangled as Robert pulled away and dropped their forehead to Myfanwy’s shoulder, breathing hard. 

Myfanwy was the same, chest heaving. “It’s ok.” 

“You must have been terrified.” 

“I was.” She reached down and ran her fingers through Robert’s hair again. “I’m not now.” 

“Good.” 

Across the room, Teddy looked a million miles away. Robert was curled in on her, on the verge of breaking down. Eliza was the clear eyed part, watching her with care, their hand still on her back, supporting her. Myfanwy reached out and touched their face. “You said you were worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep my emotions in check. Me of all people.” 

Gestalt flinched, she felt it in Robert and saw it on Eliza. “Yes. Sorry, I was hurt. I thought you were avoiding me and I was doing damage control. Poorly.” They said this very fast.

Myfanwy shook her head. “It’s ok, it’s just that...I haven't had much to go on since I woke up, just those notes,” she nodded in the direction of Teddy, who was still as stone, “and my emotions.” 

“Of course.” Eliza’s eyes were the same as Robert’s. The exact same. They hid in plain sight, but they couldn’t hide from her. Maybe they never could. 

Myfanwy took in a deep breath. “I feel...they always tell you not to trust feelings. Reason above all things. But my feelings are the only part of me I’m certain of right now.” 

“Reason…” Gestalt stroked her hair away from her face. Robert in front of her, starting to sit up, Eliza by her side, and through their skin on her skin she felt the whole of them, humming to life. “Reason says the Myfanwy I knew is dead.”

She flinched, but they held her fast, in four hands. 

“But you’re not. I can feel it.” Another kiss to her cheek this time, sweet and soft. “You should be gone. I shouldn’t even recognize you.” Eliza closed their eyes. “But I know you. I knew something was wrong when I got to the bar. I could feel that you were different in the car.”

Myfanwy stroked her hands over their face, feeling them. “Thank you for finding me.”

“Always,” Gestalt said, like an echo in the room. 

Myfanwy smiled. “You should come back inside.”

“I am inside.”

“I mean-”

“Alex. I know.” Robert picked their head up and smiled back at her. “I’m in the hall. Didn’t get very far.”

The door opened, and Alex stepped inside, came straight to her side.

Robert at her feet, Eliza sitting next to her, Alex on the arm rest, Teddy across, watching- like they were taking her in from all angles. Myfanwy pressed into them, wherever she could get. “I should have trusted you. I wanted to trust you.”

“Trust me now.”

“I do.”

She was shaken from the inside, possibly the whiplash the medic warmed her about, but also something else. Feelings and experiences had an impact on the body, like rings in a tree. Like blooms. When she touched Gestalt’s skin, she felt them. 

Myfanwy tilted her head. “What are you thinking about.” 

Gestalt blinked. All of them. “The day we met,” Eliza said, her voice low. 

“I think I could tell.” 

In her other hand, Alex’s hand flexed. “What?” 

“Do it again?” 

The bloom of feeling. Warmth. Curiosity. Affection. Myfanwy smiled. “What was that? The same?” 

Robert was studying her. “It was later, when you and Eliza were alone.” 

“We were roommates.” 

Myfanwy nodded, closed her eyes. “I feel that.” Was that part of Thomas’ power before? She hadn’t written about it. What if her power was changed, deepened somehow? What if she could feel memories? Not see them, but feel what they felt while they’re remembering them. The physical emotional experience of the body.

Heat. Passion. Love. 

“Wow.” 

“That was-”

Myfanwy giggled, light for the first time since the accident. The attack. The incident. “I know.” 

Gestalt kissed her cheek. “You’ll be alright.” 

“So will you,” Myfanwy said, and believed it. She squeezed the hand that landed in her free one, feeling the echoing power, the deep wells of feeling. Tried to send that belief back to them, and Gestalt gasped. 

All night they held her and told her the story of herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3  
I'm at paradiamond.tumblr.com


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